100819 Minot Task Force 21 and Geostrategic Analysis Triad Nuclear Modernization Conference with former Deputy Chief of Staff for Strategic Deterrence and Nuclear Integration Jack Weinstein

MR. PETER HUESSY: Good morning, everybody. My name is Peter Huessy and this is the 18th symposium we’ve done on nuclear deterrence since September of 2012. These are events I’ve put together with our great friends from Minot, North Dakota to inform the professional nuclear community about the current state of the nuclear enterprise, current nuclear policy issues, nuclear developments that affect U.S. security, arms control futures, industry contributions and technology developments and challenges we are facing, including some Congressional views. One event each year is at or near a U.S. military base with significant nuclear responsibilities, with participation and partnership with the base commander and officials. Though it’s not final yet, next July we will probably be doing our next triad event at Global Strike Command in Louisiana. We’ve also done these conferences in Minot, North Dakota, Kings Bay, Georgia, Kitsap‐Bangor, Washington, Hill Air Force Base, and three times in Crane, Indiana. Every year we also do an event here in Washington, D.C. in the first week of October, co‐sponsored by Task Force 21 and Geostrategic Analysis. I could not do these events ‐‐ including my breakfast seminars, which now number about 1,800 that we’ve done since March of 1983 – I could not do it without the support of my friends in industry. Particularly today I would like to thank the Aerospace Corporation, Boeing, General Dynamics Electric Boat and General Dynamics Mission Systems, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. Would you all give them a round of applause for their support? (Applause). And now I’d like to introduce my friend and colleague from North Dakota, Mark Janser, who is chairman of Task Force 21, who will be introducing our first speaker. Would you welcome Mark Janser? (Applause). MR. MARK JANSER: Thank you, Peter. It’s great to be here this morning. Thank you for your partnership. On behalf of Task Force 21 of Minot, welcome. We are an activity of the Minot Chamber of Commerce that educates the local community, North Dakota officials, members of Congress, and the public on national security issues, particularly ones that affect Minot Air Force Base, the U.S. Air Force and our nuclear deterrent. As many of you know, Minot is America’s only military base that is home to two legs of the nuclear triad, with B‐52 bombers and Minuteman III ICBMs. This is the eighth triad conference that Task Force 21 has hosted in association with Peter Huessy, going back to September of 2012. All of these have been focused on building a consensus to devote sufficient resources to sustain and modernize all three legs of our nuclear triad. We hope that these events have contributed to good progress during those years, and it seems so. The Air Force has taken important steps to move ahead with acquisition programs for the B‐21 long range bomber, the next generation cruise missile, and a follow‐on ICBM. The Navy is making good progress with the Ohio Replacement Program. We are confident these modernization initiatives show there is a growing consensus within Congress and among the public regarding our nuclear deterrent. Before introducing our first speaker, I’d like to acknowledge a group of “Only the Best Come North” airmen from Minot Air Force Base seated over here. How about giving them a round of applause? (Applause). I’m glad you could be with us this morning. We appreciate your service. Now I want to introduce a good friend, retired Lieutenant General Jack Weinstein. When he retired last year after a career of 36 years in the Air Force, Jack was deputy chief of staff for strategic deterrence and nuclear integration. He is now Professor Jack Weinstein of practice of international relations at Boston University’s Pardee School of Global Studies. Jack was also the steely‐eyed guy at 20th Air Force when he told the American people on “60 Minutes” what ICBMs were doing for our nation. He was the right guy in the right place at that time, so thank you for that. He spoke at our event two years ago in 2017, and we’re delighted to have him back. He looks a little different, but that’s what happens when you get out of the Air Force, I guess. He’s going to talk about securing the GBSD and the future of ICBMs. Jack Weinstein. (Applause). MR. JACK WEINSTEIN: Mark, thank you for that great introduction. My goal in life was to always grow up and to look like Mark, so I’m getting kind of close to that. (Laughter). It has been also wonderful to run into old friends that I haven’t seen for a long time, because they give me the same stare. They stare and they go, oh, it’s you. So to the people I respect deeply at Minot Air Force base, yes, one day you can grow up and grow your hair long and have a beard. I will tell you that life is wonderful on the other side, just like it was wearing the uniform. My students did ask me at Boston University if they should call me general or professor. So, I told them general worked for a while, but I really like to be called professor now. It gives me a more seasoned look. With this group here I was going to say a little more mature, but knowing the people that are looking at me right now, I wouldn’t say mature. I would just use the word seasoned. I also want to talk a little bit about the school. I’ve had the fortune to develop my own classes for the fall semester. This semester I’m teaching a class called 21st Century Deterrence: Nuclear, Space and Cyber. What’s fascinating about that is on day one I asked them about the ICBM force and I got all these great comments from students on why the ICBM force is of such value. And that was before I even talked and said one thing. So there was a knowledge level there that I was really excited about. The other course I’m teaching is leadership and cultural change. We’ve had a lot to do with that. I’m looking at my good friend Jim Kowalski, because we spend a lot of time together, and we’re doing some really world stories on that. Next semester we’re teaching defense planning, and we’re also teaching a course called “Cyber security and U.S. National Security.” As I’ve told my friends, I love being in academia. I will tell you, though, that it’s a lot more work than I thought because for the first time in my entire life I am actually doing all the reading. (Laughter). I’m telling you, I didn’t realize how much reading I gave the students until I had to read it all, so I have a briefcase in my room with tons of stuff to read. I retired from the United States Air Force exactly 368 days ago. During those 368 days the Red Sox won the World Series. I won’t talk about this year. The Patriots won another Super Bowl. But there’s one thing that has not changed, the world is still a dangerous, complex and challenging international environment, and the need to modernize the entire triad is as important today as it was then, and I will say it’s more‐so today based on what’s going on. Now, how many people have seen the YouTube video, or watched on TV, the military parade in Beijing for the 70th anniversary? If you have not watched it, you need to. It was a clear display of China’s military prowess. It wasn’t a simple military parade, but a clear display of deterrence, a clear display that we are here and we are not going to get pushed around. I couldn’t agree more than with Andrew Erickson, who is a professor at the Naval War College, who wrote, “Arguably today the biggest single statement for foreign consumption, literally backstopping the entire parade, was China’s debut of the DF‐41 solid fueled road mobile intercontinental ballistic missile.” China’s newest, most powerful, most advanced nuclear weapons system, and the DF‐41 has clearly been designed and deployed with deterring the United States in mind. It’s also described as the cornerstone of China’s nuclear weapons power, and this is part of Beijing’s comprehensive missile‐centric effort at nuclear and conventional deterrence. But there were other missiles displayed in that parade, including the DF‐100 and CJ‐100 supersonic cruise missile, prominently displaying the DF‐17 conventional missile with its hypersonic glide vehicle. Other missiles in the parade were the DF‐5 ICBM with multiple independently targeted re‐entry vehicles, the DF‐31 AG mobile ICBM, the JL‐2 submarine‐ launched ballistic missile, and the DF‐26 nuclear and conventional intermediate range ballistic missile, and I’m only skimming the surface. I haven’t talked about the aircraft that flew over that parade. Seriously, if you haven’t watched it, you really need to watch it. It is public affairs and deterrence at its best. I’ve only talked about China’s nuclear modernization efforts. Russia also has a new formidable nuclear triad. So, why are we still debating the need to modernize the triad in the building next door? And why am I reading articles by some that say we need to modify the Air Force acquisition strategy, which regardless what you read, would delay ICBM modernization? I wanted to title this talk, “I Don’t Understand.” Russia and China have shown us their playbook, and some in this country are still discussing what an acquisition strategy should look like. We need to move forward with the approved Air Force program of record and stop debating the how. This reminds me of a blue summit meeting. It was a meeting of all general officers and senior executive service members that General Mosley had when he was chief of staff of the Air Force. For those that were at that blue summit – I’m going to say for some of my friends that were at that blue summit – he talked about the airman in the tree. The airman in the tree story was, if you go back in time when General Mosley was the chief, there was a problem with buying a combat search and rescue helicopter. They couldn’t buy the search and rescue helicopter for numerous, numerous reasons, whether it was the contractor or the changing requirements or getting Congress to approve it. At the end of the speech, General Mosley said, after all this dialogue I still have an airman in a tree. And by then, I think his quote was, for the last 17 years I’ve had an airman in the tree and we’re unable to buy this. So, we’re going to tie that airman in the tree on buying a combat search and rescue helicopter to nuclear modernization. If anyone doubts the need to modernize the triad, I would simply again to go YouTube and watch a Russian nuclear exercise, translated in English, and a Chinese military parade, translated in English. Or, by the way, as my students are going to read, the Chinese national security strategy, translated in English, uploaded to a Chinese web site. So, like most Americans in this country, I don’t live in the Washington, D.C. area. I get my news from web sites, think tanks, newspapers, magazines, podcasts and friends sending me emails. As I just mentioned, I’ve learned there are some that believe the Air Force needs to redo its acquisition strategy as the number of players in the field has dwindled to one. But one is really a misnomer. It’s a team, just not the players everybody may want. So, as someone new to academia, I decided I needed to do some research to get ready for this talk. It’s helpful that I just completed the nuclear deterrence section in the class. Space was yesterday, and cyber‐space we’re going to start talking tomorrow. So, I went back to our national level documents to see what our national level documents are telling us we need to do. In the National Security Strategy it states, “We will modernize our nuclear enterprise to ensure we have the scientific, engineering and manufacturing capabilities necessary to retain an effective and safe nuclear triad and respond to future national security threats.” The 2018 National Defense Strategy states, “The department will modernize the nuclear triad, including nuclear command and control and communications, and supporting infrastructure. The modernization of the nuclear force includes developing options to counter competitor’s coercive strategies predicated on the threatened use of nuclear or strategic non‐ nuclear attacks.” While I can read to you the entire 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, there’s a couple of sentences that really captures what we’re talking about here. The Minuteman III ICBM was first deployed in 1970 with a planned 10 year service life. A series of life extension programs have kept Minuteman III viable, but component aging and inventory attrition are rapidly driving it to the end of its sustainability. From 2002 to 2012 Minuteman III underwent a life extension program intended to maintain its viability to 2030. By that time its 60 years of operation will make it the oldest deployed strategic ballistic missile in the world. The Minuteman III service life cannot be extended further. In addition, Minuteman III will have increasing difficulty penetrating future adversary defenses. And by the way, the Nuclear Posture Review – some good work from teammates – says that the ICBM force is survivable, unless it’s a massive attack. But it goes into the survivability of the ICBM force, because all legs of the triad really have all the attributes of the other legs of the triad, just some more‐so than others. But for people that say the ICBM force isn’t survivable, try doing targeting of 450 launch facilities and 400 missiles. That is the definition of survivability for the system. I had to complete my research and I went to the 2010 NPR which says, “The DOD will continue Minuteman III life extension with the aim of keeping the fleet in service to 2030 as mandated by Congress.” Please don’t forget, it was 2020 until mandated by Congress for 2030. It wasn’t based on any engineering analysis, it was based on Congress going from 2020 to 2030. So, I go back to my initial comment, I don’t understand. I don’t understand why some people are recommending we change strategy so late in the game. It’s quite evident that Russia and China have a modernized, capable and ready nuclear force. It is time we put this nation’s national security above everything else. In 2014, as Mark mentioned, I was on “60 Minutes.” By the way, I do not recommend that to anybody. As I was getting ready for “60 Minutes” I decided to call up someone I deeply respect – and I’ll call a friend now that I’ve retired – and I called up the chief of staff of the Air Force and said, I have a question. I said, I’m getting ready for “60 Minutes” what should I do? He goes, I’ve been on “60 Minutes” twice and one time it was really successful, and the second time it wasn’t. I highly suggest you’re successful the first time. (Laughter). I will tell you that is not really good advice to give on that. The pressure on “60 Minutes” was the email, the text from the secretary of the Air Force saying, I’m watching “60 Minutes” with the secretary of Defense. I hope it goes well. (Laughter). I will tell you that you would not want to be around me watching that. By the way, there was some really, really good news on “60 Minutes.” The good news on “60 Minutes” is I was in Mountain Time. The secretary of the Air Force was on Eastern Time, and I had good friends that lived in Central Time. I was getting texts through the whole thing, so by the time I watched it I realized if I had a job or not before the end. I don’t recommend it, though. But to me the most damning display that was on “60 Minutes,” and to the American public and to our adversaries, wasn’t the crowbar holding the launch control center blast door open, and it wasn’t the 8‐inch floppy drives. By the way, the crew members that are here from Minot will attest that when people go to Vandenberg – and I know we’re changing out the system – but when people went to Vandenberg and you had to teach them – for us it says, insert the floppy drive. So for people that are my age, it’s really simple. You take the floppy drive and put it in. Please explain to someone new today what a floppy drive is. They don’t even know what a floppy drive is, and now they’re going to insert a floppy drive. But to me, the most damning thing on that “60 Minutes” was the video that showed an operational site at the 90th Missile Wing at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming, that showed rust in the launch tube. Your foundational capability that the nation depends upon is a rusted launch tube holding a 1970s missile in 1960s infrastructure. So, I applaud the ICBM program office and Global Strike Command for their efforts in repairing this infrastructure. But our entire discussion should be how fast can we design, build and install a new, modern and capable long‐range ballistic missile system? And remember, it took us less time to build and install the entire Minuteman III weapons system back in the 1960s than it has taken us to do the paperwork to get the GBSD where it is today. My wife and I have really close friends, and after being assigned to F.E. Warren a couple of times ‐‐ and I love Wyoming, love North Dakota, married there, two children, are North Dakota citizens, but I really love Wyoming. Our friends in Wyoming own a ranch, and they’ve been fifth generation Wyomingites. They sold cattle and horses to Fort D.A. Russel when it opened in the late 1860s. She remembers – her mother remembers going to church one Sunday and the army of contractors just showed up out of nowhere and started digging holes in the middle of Wyoming. She said – seriously, Jack, you’re not going to believe this. I drove out one day to go to the feed store. I came back the next day and went to bed. I got up in the morning and went to church, and there was about 10,000 people digging holes in what is now the missile field. She goes, a few months later that team left and the new team came to put the missiles in the holes that the other team just built. The threat from the Soviet Union that dictated that national expense and that national focus is not the same threat we have today. The threat is different. It is more dangerous and there’s many more players that are doing this. The 70th anniversary parade in Beijing should give everyone pause, that all our efforts, all our efforts to modernize the GBSD program should be how fast can we do it, not how slow we can slow it down under the guise that we can do it faster later on. There was a team ‐‐ a professor and an engineer decided he was going to do an exercise. That exercise was giving people a marshmallow, some tape and some uncooked spaghetti, in order to build the tallest structure. The only thing you needed to make this work was the marshmallow had to be on top of this device. So this person pitted grad students, business students, lawyers – any lawyers in the room? Excellent. And CEOs and kindergarteners. (Laughter). Right off the bat I would say, who do you think would do best in this? To cut back, I’ll say we know it’s not the lawyers, right? It’s no insult, but it’s not going to be the lawyers. My thought was, it’s going to be these college students, maybe. Probably not the CEOs because they’re too busy at this top level. It’s going to be the business students that do it. No, it was the kindergarteners. The kindergarteners actually built the tallest structure. Their structures were actually 26 inches tall. The lawyer structures were 15 inches tall. The CEO structures were 22 inches tall. So the question is, why did kindergarteners actually be able to build structures taller than these people that are highly educated in the business world? The answer was really simple. They didn’t try to outmaneuver another teammate trying to show who was in charge. All the kindergarteners did was try to figure out how to build the tallest structure. So, what does that have to do with GBSD? Thinking smarter and trying to outmaneuver the competition may not have the outcome you intended. And remember, not everybody wants this program to be built. There are some that believe a day‐to‐day monad is sufficient. When I look at life, there are really two types of people. There are people that play checkers and there are people that play chess. A checkers person is someone that kind of thinks of the next steps they need to do. Those next steps they need to do, they may not think it all the way through. And then you have people that play chess. Those people not only think of what the next step is, but they think about what that step is after that. In the world, to me, the people that are successful are the people that play chess, not the people that play checkers. Again, what does this have to do with GBSD? There’s one thing I learned being in the Pentagon, and that is consistency of message with the Hill. I believe all of us in the room have taken civics classes. By the way, new students do not take civics classes. When I talk about Article I of the Constitution, I actually get a stare from my students. That should give us a little bit of concern. But the one thing I learned in the Pentagon from some great mentors, and Jamie Moran being one of them, you cannot change a story with the Hill. You may think you have a brilliant way to move forward, but explaining a change to the Hill does not work. It is playing checkers with people that play chess. So, if all of a sudden we have told them we have to build the system, we have to build the system, we have to get it done on time, and then someone else comes in and says, wait a second, let’s pause. Let’s change the acquisition strategy and then we can build the system. To the building next door to us that will translate to, obviously 2030 isn’t a hard date. If we can delay the program 18 months, we should be able to delay the program for two years, maybe three years, maybe five years. The bottom line is, our deterrent capability cannot be a rusted launch tube. Our deterrent capability has to be a system that the adversary is fearful of, because that’s deterrence. A rusted launch tube in a 1970s missile in a 1960s hole, isn’t a deterrent. Deterrence is a really simple formula. The formula for deterrence is, it does not matter what you think, and it does not matter what I think, but it damn well matters what China thinks, what Russia thinks, and what North Korea thinks. Another part of the discussion I want to get into is the competition. We always talk about, as an airman – and what’s kind of great about being a professor now is I can say whatever I want – what I really like is the ability to look at what other people do for their systems. The United States Air Force always prides itself on competition. The United States Navy doesn’t do that. I have the utmost respect for Strategic Systems Program. I worked very closely with Vice Admiral Terry Benedict, who lives in Florida now. I believe the new guy is Vice Admiral Johnny Wolf. I have a lot of respect for them. The United States Navy has a three‐star leading their nuclear deterrent requirement acquisition process. They have built a team – and I’m not going to use the names of contractors because I promised a friend of mine I am not going to use any contractor names today – but they have built a team, a team that is a highly respected team of someone that does integration, someone that builds the boosters, somebody that does the guidance development, and someone that builds the guidance. No one on Capitol Hill questions the need to sole source this effort. No one questions the Navy’s ability or commitment to the nuclear force. Using that as a role model, no one should have a concern on the current GBSD industry team. But, I will give you one caveat. That one caveat is, the program has to be built on time and on budget, because I am fearful if we do not build this program on time and on budget we will walk ourselves into a day‐to‐day monad. Even though I love bombers, bombers are not on alert every single day. So, without the ICBM force your only force that’s on alert is the sub force, not fully deployed. All you need to do is start counting the number of targets when you don’t have an ICBM force, and we could do target planning right now. All you need to do is target two sub bases, target bomber bases, target places in Utah and New Mexico, always target Washington, D.C., and target U.S. Strategic Command. And then, all of a sudden, your peer on the nuclear stage is no longer Russia. It may not even be China. It could be North Korea, without a day‐to‐ day ICBM force on alert 24/7. The United States Air Force can also learn a lesson from the United States Navy on the leadership it takes to lead a nuclear acquisition program. While the Air Force strategic systems PEO is a very talented general officer, he has an extremely large portfolio, a vast portfolio across not only maintaining Minuteman III to developing GBSD, to doing the B‐61 and other items in the portfolio. If, indeed, nuclear is the number one priority for the defense of our nation, then the Air Force should easily be able to find a very talented general officer to lead the GBSD program. I firmly believe in the value of ICBMs to the defense of our nation. For those that believe we can still have a formidable deterrent without a triad, it’s time we looked at the international strategic environment through the lens of other nations. It truly doesn’t matter, as I said, what we think, it really matters what other nations think about our capability. They have to know that not only do we have the will to use our weapons, we need the capability, and that capability is a modernized land‐based strategic deterrent. So, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping need to be deterred. The best way to maintain peace, that I see in the 21st century, is to have a modernized Department of Energy infrastructure. You cannot be a nuclear power unless you can build nuclear weapons. It needs to be a modernized nuclear security agency. We need a new bomber, a new cruise missile, a new Navy submarine, and the bedrock of our day‐to‐day deterrent capability, a new 21st century land‐based strategic weapon. Thank you. (Applause). I’m happy to take questions. MR. TOM NEWTON (ph): Tom Newton from Booz Allen. Given your last year, I’d like to ask you the question that you asked us the last time I saw you. What’s our Maginot Line? MR. WEINSTEIN: The question is, what’s our Maginot Line? The discussion we got into the last time was, the French built this great system thinking they could defend against Germany. The way Germany attacked the first time, we’re going to build the Maginot Line. So, what’s our Maginot Line right now? I think it’s a lack of commitment. I think the worst thing we can do is have red lines, say what our red lines are, and then let people cross those red line and we don’t do anything about it. I think this debate on the need for a triad I find interesting. It’s never about cost. We have the money to do this. It’s a priority, to quote General Welsh, the previous CINCSAC and chief of staff. So, if it’s a foundational capability, you have the money. I said that when I wore the uniform and I got mentored after that. I think our Maginot Line is really the lack of a will and a commitment on this force, based on discussions that happened in the building next door. People – and I can get political – people may not like the current administration. That does not mean you change the way nuclear forces are executed. Nuclear forces are executed under the command of the commander in chief for a reason, and that reason makes perfect sense of how you need to defend the nation. Getting into discussions like that, getting into discussions of I think you don’t need an ICBM force – and by the way, we’re pretty close depending on who wins what. You look at the Nuclear Posture Review from 2018, I can hold the document up, because the Nuclear Posture Review was written before President Trump became the president. It’s just like there was a Nuclear Posture Review written when President Clinton became the president. Lack of commitment, across the board, I think is the thing we need to be concerned about right now. That’s why I keep harping on that Chinese military parade. You can listen to the words of the announcers, and it’s typical, I’ll say flowery, language. But to see a DF‐41, people marching up there, jumping into the cab of the vehicle, driving the vehicle out, that was a precision event. And it was clearly to show that we’ve arrived and we’re not getting pushed out. Good luck, United States Navy, in the South China Sea. MR. : Jack, talk a little bit about what your perception is of the students. You know, we always have this vision of who the Millennials are and their capabilities. Maybe you can give us some insights having done this for a little while. MR. WEINSTEIN: I will tell you that I am really, really impressed with undergraduate students. Maybe it’s the university I teach at where to be an undergraduate there they’re getting in based on the same SAT and GPA that the University of Pennsylvania has right now, so they’re really talented. They really want to understand the international environment. The grad students come from many different countries, and I’ve learned a lot from the grad students. There are very few people that do what I do at the university, so I’m like the only guy that was wearing a uniform. What I’m finding out about it is the current generation hungers for knowledge and they want to mentor. I have officer hours twice a week, like every good professor. I have people coming to see me – most of the people that come to see me aren’t my students. They are other students in the school that are looking for assistance. I had a student that came to me last week – if anyone understands how the Canadian government is organized, please come and talk to me because I have a student that graduated from McGill University. Her parents, her father, her grandfather, all served in the Canadian military. And she wants to know, I really want to get into national security, how do I get into national security in Canada? I was stumped. I go, I don’t know. I’ll look around and I’ll talk to people, but I’ll try to help you. Really talented. I will tell you also that the students that are living in – are in different circumstances than Americans and see life differently. I have a Chinese student in my leadership class. When the United States Navy talked this week on the South China Sea and freedom of navigation, I just watched body language the entire time to see what the Chinese students would do or say. They’re very quiet in class, I’ll put it that way. I also learned, and this is something that I did not know so if anyone in here knows it, heads up. I didn’t realize that if you live in the Middle East and your parents are not from that country, you can never hold a passport from that country. I didn’t understand that. So, we had a welcome and I’m talking to a student and I go, where are you from? He goes, I just spent time in Scotland. I got a Masters degree in Scotland. I went to college in London, and now I’m here at BU. I go, where are you from? He goes, I’m from Dubai. I go, that’s interesting. He goes, but I hold an Iranian passport. I go, what? He goes, I’m holding an Iranian passport because my parents are Iranian. They escaped Iran in the ‘70s. They went to Dubai. They became permanent residents of Dubai. But because they weren’t born in Dubai, they cannot be Dubai citizens. And because they can’t be a Dubai citizen, neither can I. I can’t be a Dubai citizen, either, so I hold an Iranian passport. Now if you want to understand culture, if you understand Arabia versus Persia ‐‐ he goes, I carry an Iranian passport. I speak Arabic and I’m an Arab. I barely speak Farsi and I’ve been to Iran for two weeks in my life, but I can’t get a Dubai passport. So he looks at me and goes, professor, what can you help me with? He goes, I want to help someone improve the international relations environment. It’s very difficult to do when you don’t belong to a country. So, I’m actually helping him on things of that nature. I find them really, really talented. They understood deterrence. We’re getting into the concept now, and there’s a lot of different opinions on this, but we talked about space and is there such a thing as space deterrence? I have my own opinion of that, and we’re going to start talking cyber. I go back to one of my best mentors in the world is General Welsh and General Welsh saying there’s nuclear deterrence, and don’t pervert what nuclear deterrence is by putting other capability over the word deterrence. You have a weapon that has been invented, it cannot be un‐invented. So, even though people will talk about a world free of nuclear weapons, maybe a world free of nuclear weapons works when the environment changes and we don’t have nations fighting nations. To quote General Hyten, the commander of U.S. Strategic Command and soon to be the vice chairman, any domain people operate in is going to be conflict. So, we operate in space, there’s going to be space conflict. That’s just human nature. To say we can uninvent this and we can cut down the deterrent force and it’s going to make the world safer, I’m not seeing that at all. Anything from my friends at Minot? MS. : I’d like to piggyback off of that, Alexandra Bell with the Air Force Association. I’m very pleased to hear that your students are excited and understanding and interested. I’ve, unfortunately, not had that same experience among young professionals and students and young staffers, especially here in D.C., which is not good for what we’re doing, in my humble opinion. But it seems like you’ve tapped into how to get through to these students. So my question to you is, how do we, everyone in this room, better get our message across to these young professionals, these Millennials, who might not have the same mindset as a lot of us in the room? I think, obviously, that the heart of the nuclear enterprise is the people. Without it, what are we going to do in the future? Any thoughts on that? MR. WEINSTEIN: I do, but it’s going to sound like I’m patting myself on the back, so I’ll do it, because I can. You need people that look like me to be in the classrooms with these students, so they can have a difference of opinion. To be honest, I don’t want anyone to think I brainwash the students. For every pro article on nuclear the students have to read, they get a negative article or a con article on nuclear. If we’re talking about the value of nuclear deterrence, they get articles that say that there is no value to nuclear deterrence. Boston University had a retired four‐star combatant commander as part of the faculty. He retired 10 years ago. They have not had a military person as a professor in the international relations school for a decade. And then, I come in, and I don’t teach like an academic because I don’t even know what that means. I teach like I’m talking to a bunch of professionals that I want to impart something to. So, my classes are not, I’ll say academic focused, but real life story focused on what it’s like to be a missile combat crew member at Grand Forks Air Force Base in 1980 having an evil empire there, fully believing what I’m doing, knowing that I had the backstop of the commander in chief, to what it’s like to be at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in 2004 when the commander of the Russia Strategic Rocket Forces showed up and we had a discussion, and what that relationship was like, and the relationship with the commander of the Russian Space Forces at Vandenberg, to now look at 2010 to realize the world has completely changed, so I can have that discussion. If there’s no one in the school that can actually talk about that, then you have a whole group of people that have never even had these discussions, and I’m talking to like hundreds of people. But the student mafia is pretty powerful and when one of the schools in Boston was putting together a panel, they called me up and said, would you mind giving a speech on Saturday in November at a panel on deterrence? Oh, I’d love to talk to 1,000 students on deterrence. We’ve got to figure out ways for people to start getting into the classroom. I made the comment before, students aren’t even taught civics. I got a great lesson ‐‐ and some people in the room will laugh at me because I’m going to use names ‐‐ I’ve known Frank Klotz, the 20th Air Force commander, retired, three‐star – I met Frank Klotz at Grand Forks Air Force Base. I just celebrated my 35th anniversary. My 36th will be next year. I’ve known Frank Klotz longer. When I went into the Pentagon as a one‐star he called me down to the office, because I needed to be mentored, because that’s what he does. He called me into the office and it was really, really good advice. What General Klotz told me was, A‐8 doesn’t build budgets. The Air Force doesn’t build budgets. Congress, Article I, is responsible for raising and supporting armies. Don’t forget that when you’re getting called over to Congress. That’s not a problem. That’s not Congress being a pain. That is Congress doing their constitutional responsibilities. That’s kind of a good lesson. When you have students that don’t take civics, so they don’t even understand the role of the executive branch, the legislative branch or the judicial branch, that is a problem. My only advice for some of these new staffers is it would be great if they could sit down and be mentored, not negatively, but mentored. And to be honest, I like people with differences of opinion. I’ve talked to multiple universities when I wore a uniform, and I would ask someone to say, do you support nuclear deterrence? The answer is no, I don’t like nuclear weapon, I want nothing to talk about it. Okay, let’s explore that. Where do you get your news from? Where do you get your information from? What does deterrence do? So, I just think they need more role models of people that have actually done the mission, that are actually talking about it, not just someone that – love my colleagues, wrote a book about it. So in the school, I’m the only military person that had military experience. While we have some grad students that were ex‐military, separated military, I’m the only full‐ time person. We have two members of the CIA that talk about the intel community. We have a UK ambassador, we have U.S. ambassador, and we have an ambassador from Montenegro, which is actually fascinating when you talk to him about NATO and Article V of the treaty, and Montenegro being a small country that’s smaller than Wyoming. Fascinating discussions. More mentors. They need to get a balanced education. MR. ERIN KELLIN (ph): Erin Kellin, the bomber maintenance commander up at Minot. Lately, for the last year or so, we in the military command don’t even talk about deterrence anymore, we talk about lethality. So, I was just wondering about your thoughts, your impressions of the changes in the marketing strategy or labeling that we use, if you have any thoughts on it? MR. WEINSTEIN: I do have a thought on it. There was an ICBM officer that went to Harvard as part of his SDE, his development education, and he wrote a paper on it. I think at the level you’re at, and people at a wing, you do combat capability. You do combat power. Your job is lethality. I’ll tell you, when I was an ops group commander and all that stuff, I would talk about deterrence and I realized that that doesn’t make any sense. What does deterrence mean when I’m pulling alerts or I’m driving a crew vehicle or I’m flying a B‐52? I believe it’s completely perfect. What you need to worry about is you deliver combat power. In the bomb squadron, you deliver combat power. In the ICBM squadron, you deliver power. That’s what you do. Deterrence is the by‐product of it. You don’t have a deterrent capability unless you have combat power. So, I think lethality is exactly what you need to talk about. I also think everyone needs to know why they’re doing the combat power. Go back to having your airmen look at a Chinese military parade. If you haven’t seen it, it is stark, much better than any parade the French do and much better than any parade the Russians do. But lethality is what you deliver. MR. HUESSY: Thank you, general. MR. WEINSTEIN: Thank you. MR. HUESSY: Thank you very much. (Applause).